SUDAN NEWS ALERT: Guardian - EU-funded Egyptian forces ‘rounding up and deporting Sudanese refugees’

19/6/2024: Guardian - EU-funded Egyptian forces ‘rounding up and deporting Sudanese refugees’, by Ruth Michaelson

The Guardian report that Egyptian authorities have used EU-funded security forces in a campaign of mass arrests and forcible deportations against refugees from the Sudan war, according to Amnesty International.

Amnesty found that Egypt “forcibly returned an estimated 800 Sudanese detainees between January and March 2024, who were all denied the possibility to claim asylum”.

Amnesty said a campaign of mass arrests in Cairo and neighbouring Giza, where police have “conducted mass stops and identity checks targeting black individuals, spreading fear within the refugee community”.

Amnesty documented 14 arrests of refugees from public hospitals in Aswan. People were held in makeshift detention facilities run by Egyptian border guards, a force that has received extensive EU funding.

Refugees, including at least 11 children and their mothers, were taken to filthy warehouses or stables at military sites